For first time since it as created, the Toronto District School Board is proposing to balance its budget without cutting staff or programs

What’s historic about this week’s meeting of the Toronto District School Board — aside from the presence of police to keep the peace — is that for the first time since the board was created 16 years ago, trustees do not expect to have to cut school programs or staff to balance the books.

There’s a scant $12.5-million deficit this year on a $3-billion budget, compared to recent yearly shortfalls ranging from $55 million to $110 million. The budget committee believes that with belt-tightening away from the classroom — not replacing head office staff who retire, scrapping overtime repairs and a new staff attendance tracking system the board hopes will curb absenteeism — Canada’s largest school board could pass a balanced budget Wednesday without the sort of cuts to beloved staff and programs that ignite debate each spring.

“We’ve made about $200 million in tough cuts over the past three years, so this is the light at the end of the tunnel,” said Trustee Jerry Chadwick, a former principal and chair of the board’s budget committee. “And I have to give credit to staff for coming up with these viable alternatives to cuts to the classroom.”

Since the board was created through amalgamation in 1998 and made wholly dependent on provincial funds, it has closed schools, drained pools, scrapped math and music camps, shuttered outdoor education centres and made deep cuts to the ranks of caretakers, secretaries, youth counsellors, attendance counsellors, education assistants and curriculum consultants in order to balance the budget. When trustees refused in 2002, the province sent in a supervisor for a year to do it for them, as it did also in Hamilton and Ottawa.

In 2012 the TDSB approved some $51 million in staff cuts, including 430 education assistants, 134 school secretaries, 17 vice-principals and 200 high school teachers by making classes slightly larger. This fall, the board expects to need 165 fewer high school teachers because of the steady drop in high school students, but those can be handled through attrition, said Chadwick.

The board also hopes to save about $2.3 million a year by having its facilities department use GPS route-planners in its vehicles to plan more timely routes “and spend more time ‘hands on tools,’” said board comptroller Craig Snider.

Likewise, an attendance-tracking feature on the payroll system will flag absenteeism trends, said Snider. “Could it be a Friday issue (teachers last spring were more likely to call in sick on Fridays than other days) or maybe a school where staff is getting sick from poor ventilation and we need to put in a filter system?”

Too, the board hopes by balancing its budget in March, months earlier than usual, it will show “we’re on stable financial footing,” said Snider, “and can manage our resources.

“The board has made some difficult structural changes in the past two years that have meant we don’t have to touch schools.”

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